“Are you going to venture?” said Phineas to the lady.
“I should like it of all things if I were not afraid for my clothes. Will you come?”
“I was never good upon the water. I should be seasick to a certainty. They are going down beneath the bridge too, and we should be splashed by the steamers. I don’t think my courage is high enough.” Thus Phineas excused himself, being still intent on prosecuting his search for Violet.
“Then neither will I,” said Madame Goesler. “One dash from a peccant oar would destroy the whole symmetry of my dress. Look. That green young lady has already been sprinkled.”
“But the blue young gentleman has been sprinkled also,” said Phineas, “and they will be happy in a joint baptism.” Then they strolled along the river path together, and were soon alone. “You will be leaving town soon, Madame Goesler?”
“Almost immediately.”
“And where do you go?”
“Oh—to Vienna. I am there for a couple of months every year, minding my business. I wonder whether you would know me, if you saw me;—sometimes sitting on a stool in a countinghouse, sometimes going about among old houses, settling what must be done to save them from tumbling down. I dress so differently at such times, and talk so differently, and look so much older, that I almost fancy myself to be another person.”
“Is it a great trouble to you?”
“No—I rather like it. It makes me feel that I do something in the world.”
“Do you go alone?”
“Quite alone. I take a German maid with me, and never speak a word to anyone else on the journey.”
“That must be very bad,” said Phineas.
“Yes; it is the worst of it. But then I am so much accustomed to be alone. You see me in society, and in society only, and therefore naturally look upon me as one of a gregarious herd; but I am in truth an animal that feeds alone and lives alone. Take the hours of the year all through, and I am a solitary during four-fifths of them. And what do you intend to do?”
“I go to Ireland.”
“Home to your own people. How nice! I have no people to go to. I have one sister, who lives with her husband at Riga. She is my only relation, and I never see her.”
“But you have thousands of friends in England.”
“Yes—as you see them,”—and she turned and spread out her hands towards the crowded lawn, which was behind them. “What are such friends worth? What would they do for me?”
“I do not know that the Duke would do much,” said Phineas laughing.
Madame Goesler laughed also. “The Duke is not so bad,” she said. “The Duke would do as much as anyone else. I won’t have the Duke abused.”
“He may be your particular friend, for what I know,” said Phineas.
“Ah;—no. I have no particular friend. And were I to wish to choose one, I should think the Duke a little above me.”
“Oh, yes;—and too stiff, and too old, and too pompous, and too cold, and too make-believe, and too gingerbread.”
“Mr. Finn!”
“The Duke is all buckram, you know.”
“Then why do you come to his house?”
“To see you, Madame Goesler.”
“Is that true, Mr. Finn?”
“Yes;—it is true in its way. One goes about to meet those whom one likes, not always for the pleasure of the host’s society. I hope I am not wrong because I go to houses at which I like neither the host nor the hostess.” Phineas as he said this was thinking of Lady Baldock, to whom of late he had been exceedingly civil—but he certainly did not like Lady Baldock.
“I think you have been too hard upon the Duke of Omnium. Do you know him well?”
“Personally? certainly not. Do you? Does anybody?”
“I think he is a gracious gentleman,” said Madame Goesler, “and though I cannot boast of knowing him well, I do not like to hear him called buckram. I do not think he is buckram. It is not very easy for a man in his position to live so as to please all people. He has to maintain the prestige of the highest aristocracy in Europe.”
“Look at his nephew, who will be the next Duke, and who works as hard as any man in the country. Will he not maintain it better? What good did the present man ever do?”
“You believe only in motion, Mr. Finn;—and not at all in quiescence. An express train at full speed is grander to you than a mountain with heaps of snow. I own that to me there is something glorious in the dignity of a man too high to do anything—if only he knows how to carry that dignity with a proper grace. I think that there should be breasts made to carry stars.”
“Stars which they have never earned,” said Phineas.
“Ah;—well; we will not fight about it. Go and earn your star, and I will say that it becomes you better than any glitter on the coat of the Duke of Omnium.” This she said with an earnestness which he could not pretend not to notice or not to understand. “I too may be able to see that the express train is really greater than the mountain.”
“Though, for your own life, you would prefer to sit and gaze upon the snowy peaks?”
“No;—that is not so. For myself, I would prefer to be of use somewhere—to someone, if it were possible. I strive sometimes.”
“And I am sure successfully.”
“Never mind. I hate to talk about myself. You and the Duke are fair subjects for conversation; you as the express train, who will probably do your sixty miles an hour in safety, but may possibly go down a bank with a crash.”
“Certainly I may,” said Phineas.
“And the Duke, as the mountain, which is fixed in its stateliness, short of the power of some earthquake, which shall
